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West Virginia Wants Out, but Big East Won’t Let Go

A day of celebration turned into a day of confusion and uncertainty for West Virginia.

The Big 12 formally announced Friday morning that West Virginia would become a member of the league, but one vexing issue remained: when will the Mountaineers leave the Big East?

West Virginia is resolute that it will enter the Big 12 on July 1, 2012, despite the Big East’s 27-month exit period that Pittsburgh and Syracuse are begrudgingly adhering to. The West Virginia president, James P. Clements, has indicated negotiations were under way with the Big East on how the university could leave after this year.

“Our team and their team are in discussions about how we make that happen,” Clements said at a news conference.

The Big East denied that discussions were taking place and said it had not heard from anyone on West Virginia’s team as of late Friday. The Big East has no plans to give West Virginia any leniency. Not only does the Big East have contractual obligations, but it also worries that it would set a bad precedent for Syracuse and Pittsburgh.

While the Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner, John Swofford, was clear that the league would respect the Big East’s bylaws, the Big 12 took a different tactic. The interim commissioner Chuck Neinas unintentionally struck at the heart of the issue when he mentioned how pleased that league’s television and bowl partners were at the addition of West Virginia.

Conferences have to provide enough inventory for their multimillion dollar television deals and enough quality teams that will travel to bowl games. With Missouri on the cusp of leaving the Big 12, the immediate addition of West Virginia would help greatly.

But it also significantly hurts the Big East in those areas. Now every team will have to scramble to find a replacement game for West Virginia on the schedule, and bowl partners will be unhappy because the Mountaineers were the league’s best draw.

Clements said that West Virginia had wired $2.5 million to the Big East on Friday, which is half of the $5 million buyout that they would owe for leaving the conference. Asked why he approached the quicker exit date while Pittsburgh and Syracuse conceded to sticking around for two years, he said, “No comment.”

“West Virginia is fully aware that the Big East Conference is committed to enforcing the 27-month notification period for members who choose to leave the conference,” said the Big East commissioner John Marinatto.

With Neinas saying that further expansion “is not on the horizon at the moment,” the realignment baton appears to be passed to the Big East for its overhaul. Neinas said Missouri had not withdrawn yet, but that seems to be a formality. The Big 12 did not even list Missouri as a team for the 2012 season on its news release.

Marinatto and the Big East associate commissioner Nick Carparelli Jr. visited Air Force and Boise State on Wednesday and Thursday, making presentations to university officials about the league’s 12-team model. The key to luring Boise State, which is paramount in the Big East’s keeping its automatic qualifying status with the Bowl Championship Series, will be giving it a western partner. That could be Air Force, but Brigham Young could move into the picture now that they are officially out of the Big 12’s mix.

There is also a notion percolating that the Big East needs to grow beyond 12 football programs and 16 basketball programs to better fortify its basketball side and protect itself from further poaching of its football teams. That leaves open the possibility that the Big East could grow to a 14-team football league and an 18-team basketball league.

Improving basketball has become an especially important issue for coaches and athletic directors after the league lost the perennial powers Pittsburgh, Syracuse and West Virginia. Louisville Coach Rick Pitino is advocating for Temple and Memphis to be added.

“We have to get back to our core and make basketball strong,” Pitino said Friday. “Memphis is in the mix with every top-10 recruit in the country, and Temple is a top-30 basketball program.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 29, 2011, on page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: W. Virginia Set to Exit; Big East Won’t Let Go. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe